


Origins

by spicylatina



Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Minor Character(s), POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 08:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19437913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicylatina/pseuds/spicylatina
Summary: A brief look into the life of Vyvyan's mother, and what led her to abandon her son.





	Origins

Vyvyan Basterd was not named as such at birth.

Well, he was named Vyvyan. His mother, Pauline, genuinely thought Vyvyan was a unisex name. She’d never admit to this, and instead preferred everyone to believe she’d done it on purpose for a laugh. Even Vyvyan, who grew up believing that he was such a joke to his mother that she hadn’t even picked out a proper name for him. In reality, she’d heard it when she was 8 months pregnant, lying on the hostel bed provided for her, half asleep. The cheap television set one of the other women treasured was blaring, and it appeared to be one of the names of the characters on the soap opera that she was watching. She had no idea of who it belonged to, she just thought it sounded good.

The part that came later was the last name “Basterd”.

Pauline gave birth in a hospital in the seediest part of London. She went into labour whilst at the hostel, and they promptly whisked her away and left her for the hospital staff to take care of. The labour pains came quick and hard and she sobbed and screamed and cursed alone. The nurses left her – they had more serious incidents to deal with – and when Vyvyan finally appeared, she looked down between her legs, umbilical cord still intact, blood and amniotic fluid everywhere, and thought “That is not my son”. It looked like an alien to her. She was nineteen years old, barely out of school herself. There was probably a fifteen-minute window between his birth and the arrival of any staff, and she wrapped him in hospital issue paper towels and held him close and tried so hard to love him, but she couldn’t. 

When the staff arrived and they asked what last name to put on the birth certificate, she couldn’t give them an answer. She had no idea who the father was. Vyvyan was conceived on a heady September night. She’d been invited to a friend’s party. The air was hot with the remnants of summer and so was she. Some guy, she didn’t know who, took a fancy to her, and they laughed and drank and smoked together all night. When most people had left, he pulled her close and she didn’t pull away.

One moment of weakness, she thought bitterly, staring at her new-born son. One moment of weakness, and here I am, stuck like this.

“Miss?” said one of the nurses, pulling her out of her memories.

“What?” she retorted.  
“We really do need a last name. It’s the law.”  
She looked down at the baby, squinting. She thought she could maybe see a hint of his father in his features. He began to cry, a thin wail that echoed through the room.  
She grimaced.  
“Put Basterd.”  
“...I’m sorry?”  
“Did I stutter?” 

And so it was done. She took him back to the hostel, now a rather sweet looking baby, chubby and wide eyed and certainly curious. Of course, she noticed this, but now she couldn’t disassociate the adorable infant in front of her with the screaming little alien that had caused her so much pain and stress. She fed him, and bathed him, and changed his nappy, but did so with a disgusted detachment. The other women cooed over him and tickled his stomach and told her how lucky she was, and then turned to each other and whispered about how much of a whore she was, and how she deserved to be stuck with a child so young. “It’s retribution!” she heard one declare.

She knew she couldn’t stay there, but she couldn’t think where else to go. A few years earlier, when she had her first boyfriend, she turned to her own mother, an alcoholic with a taste for spite, and told her she was leaving with him and that she couldn’t stop her. Not that she tried; in her view it was one less mouth to feed, and that meant more money for drink. She could get a job and find her own place, but it would be difficult to find work in her position; Vyvyan was pretty much a full-time job. Besides, she barely had an education.

She worried about it for weeks. Until finally, the answer to her prayers arrived in the form of Derek.

Derek was a truck driver, who met Vyvyan’s mother as he was dropping off a load of supplies for the hostel. She sidled around the side of the truck, gave him a big smile, and instantly began to chat him up. He was flattered at the attention; despite her pregnancy, she was still gorgeous and it was almost impossible to tell what her body had been through. She flirted and smiled and laughed, and well, if Vyvyan lay alone in her room wailing, to her it was worth it. To her, Derek was a way out. They dated for a while, and almost immediately he asked her to move in with him. He was a rather plain man, unused to attention, especially from girls like her. He just knew this would be perfect. And it was. Until she turned up on his doorstep, luggage in her left arm and Vyvyan in her right. He never even knew she had a child. She wheedled and begged him to let him stay. And meek as he was, he caved almost immediately. But Pauline was hyperaware of the fact that he was calling the shots. He held the power. And she had to do everything she could to stay.   
So if Derek got a little drunk on the power, that was alright. If he expected her to “earn her keep”, that was more than understandable. If he ordered her around, she was in no position to not play along. This continued for months, and as time went on, he got worse and worse. So when he slapped her for burning his dinner, she didn’t mind. When he wanted sex, and she felt ill at the thought of it, she shut up and let him use her. And when Vyvyan cried, and he shook him too hard, and he threw things at him, and he stubbed cigarettes out on him, what could she do?

Besides, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t had to endure everything Vyvyan did, if not worse. He could take it. And she didn’t exactly adore him in the first place. 

So the years went by, and things got worse. Things reached a tipping point one night when Vyvyan was five. She was asleep on the sofa, bottle of gin by her side, while Vyvyan slept on the floor in the same room. Derek walked in after a few days working away and saw what to him looked like an opportunity. When she woke, he was inside of her, breathing heavily, panting, and thrusting with Vyvyan watching a few feet away, pale as a ghost. Her instincts kicked in and she started screaming, kicking, clawing and biting Derek, desperate to just get him off her. He reached out, grabbed her by the throat and squeezed hard. She lay there for what seemed to her like forever, gasping for breath while he used her. Like she wasn’t even human. She was an object. A thing.

That same night, she packed a suitcase, listened carefully for any signs of life, and crept out of the house, leaving Vyvyan and Derek sleeping fitfully. Pausing on the doorstep, she looked up at the window where she knew Vyvyan’s bedroom stood. She stared up at it for a moment, looked down at herself and sighed. Sucking in a breath, she went back into the house, straight upstairs, and woke Vyvyan, not gently, but quietly enough so as to not wake Derek. She went with five – year – old sleepy Vyvyan back to the hostel from so long ago, in the dark of night, yet they refused her admittance. 

“We don’t take children.” the middle-aged woman behind the desk told her slowly. Condescendingly, she thought. 

“Well what the fuck am I supposed to do with the kiddie then? Send him back to where he came from? I’ve only just fully healed up – “  
“You will either have to go somewhere else or look into alternative arrangements for him”.

Hmm. That didn’t sound so bad. She could have her life back, a job, friends. A fresh start. Vyvyan looked up at her through his dishevelled blonde fringe and try as she might, she couldn’t see anything but that tiny purple alien screaming on the hospital bed, or that gormless idiot gawping as she was violated right before his eyes. It was him. He had caused her all this pain, and that little bastard didn’t even have the decency to be sorry. 

“What do I need to do?”

After a few phone calls and a lot of paperwork, she passed Vyvyan into the arms of a tired – looking social worker, and promised him that she’d come back. She felt ashamed, watching him beg and cry and plead for her to stay. She truly did. Not that she’d ever admit it to anyone, even him

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Sorry, I know it is a little short, but its just a minor piece to allow me to get back into writing fic after a while away.


End file.
